Grey water
Hi all. My first post here. There will probably be quite a few more.
We will shortly be building a new home in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. We are looking at doing quite a bit of sustainable stuff. One option we are looking at is grey water reuse. Ideally we’d like a treatment system that produces water suitable for use in toilets and for laundry.
I’ve been researching commercial systems available and it seems to be really slim pickings. There’s only a handful approved for use in NSW and only a few of those are actually still available.
Of what is left, I’ve narrowed it down to two possible systems that are even possibly viable.
One is the Greywise System produced in WA. Generally looks pretty good but power usage is a concern. Price isn’t too bad but certainly not cheap.
The other is Root Zone. I just love the concept of a reed bed system, but the price is crazy.
Also, a general concern I have with these systems is that these companies don’t seem to last too long or at least their products don’t, so a few years down the track I might be stuck for parts or service.
Whilst researching, I came across the water reuse part of yourhome.gov.au. The pdf download (http://www.yourhome.gov.au/sites/prod.yourhome.gov.au/files/pdf/YOURHOME-Water-WastewaterReuse.pdf ) has some interesting info regarding building your own greywater treatment system. In part it says :
“With council approval, it is possible to build your own biological treatment system for greywater treatment. ‘References and additional reading’ at the end of this article has more details.”
Funnily enough the diagram shown in the article looks very similar to the Root Zone system, the design of which is shown in quite some detail on the NSW Dept Health website.
Interestingly, I found this on the NSW dept Health website, so it is allowable for the council to approve a non-commercial system:
“14.3 Accreditation of Sewage Management Facilities by NSW Health (Clause 43 Local Government (Approvals) Regulation 1999)
A Local Authority must not approve of the installation of a manufactured DGTS unless the DGTS has been accredited by NSW Health. However, a one off single design DGTS for one specific premises, or a test installation of a DGTS does not require NSW Health accreditation and Council may approve of its installation without accreditation. Any land application system does not require accreditation by NSW Health.“
Unfortunately, a lot of the references from the article appear to out of date so I can’t find much specific info on how to build one.
Although in principle a reed bed system looks relatively simple to design and build, there are some details that I would need to work out and the consequences of getting things wrong are pretty serious. I also don’t feel like I can just rip off someone else’s commercial system. I do think I need some pretty concrete info to get it right, but that seems to be pretty scarce. Mostly I’ve only been able come up with systems that disperse the water over your land and not back into the house.
So if anyone can point me in the direction of some good info, that would be much appreciated.